Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!
This week’s Weekly discussion thread will be focused on Capitalism / Economic Systems. Here is the definition we will be using so everyone can use the same terminology. If your argument does not use that definition, we ask that you reframe so that it does so that everyone can work within the same framework.
Here are some questions that should help kickstart things:
- Is capitalism effective? Is it good, or as evil as some Lemmy instances will have you believe?
- Are there better alternatives, and why are they better?
- How could we realistically move toward those alternatives?
- Is there anything you do not understand or would like to discuss about Capitalism / Economic Systems?
Capitalism is a problem even if some social problems could in principle be addressed with reforms. Even in an idealized capitalism, there would still be one major human rights violation at the heart of it, the employer-employee contract. The mismatch between legal and factual responsibility inherent in this contract necessitates abolishing it, which would be an abolition of capitalism.
A maximum income would disincentivize investment from the wealthiest. Minimum wage is good
Hrm. I don't know if I agree. I am the C.E.O. (and an Economist) of a medium-sized I.T. firm in Canada and designed the company to be as ethical as it could possibly be from the ground up.
All that being said, I'm not bragging, I'm genuinely asking... what if other companies were run the way I run my company? What's the ethical issue? And no, this isn't theoretical, this is how we actually operate. There's no hidden evil.
I understand that not every business owner is "good." With proper regulation, however, we can make them at least behave way, way the fuck better. It's a form of Social Capitalism and it's exceedingly functional from my experience.
Our major difference is terminological.
What I mean by abolishing the employer-employee relationship is the legal system protecting workers' inalienable rights and mandating worker coops. In a worker coop, all workers are jointly self-employed. Your firm sounds more ethical than the norm under capitalism.
If I were starting a firm, all workers would have equal voting shares. These shares would be inalienable. Non-voting preferred stock would be treated as tradable property @actual_discussion
Which I understand. It's why I called the company a "firm" as I feel it's a more accurate descriptor. The main difference is that we don't let employees just starting their trial period vote or lead a team yet until they get a feel for how we operate. We're quite a large swing from what normal companies do and it takes time to adjust and understand, not to mention that our processes are a complete rethink of how it is anywhere else.
The shares can be sold to other shareholders, but not to anyone outside the company. Unlike most corporations, we don't want solely financially invested shareholders as they're in business to extract value. They are parasites.
I've built this model out in hopes it will catch on. I feel that if most companies operated under Social Capitalism that we'd be substantially better off. Certain aspects of it are so important and such a step up from the norm that I don't understand how they weren't obvious to other owners. But... greed I guess. Greed hurts every system it's in.